Looking back through history, there are a lot more men who thought they were Alexander the Great then men who actually were.

It is catch-up time for some of my long-running shows. Over the past week or two, I finished up the final season of the Game of ThronesTV series. At more-or-less the same time I’ve been watching Season 4 of The Expanse. This time, however, I decided to lead with the book version of the story, reading Cibola Burn and Nemesis Games so as to stay ahead of the TV version of the story.

I compare these two experiences because both of these shows started out in the most promising way possible. After watching Season 1 of Game of Thrones, I was of the opinion that this was perhaps the best conversions of a novel I had ever seen. After a single season of The Expanse, I thought it was possibly the best science fiction TV series I had seen. Recall, I had yet to read any of the books at that point, but my positive opinion of the television series held up well after reading the source material.

In both of these cases, however, they could not fulfill the promise of their first impression. At first, HBO’s problem was more of a cumulative effects of small changes. The first season alternations seemed well chosen to aid the conversion from book to screen and, as I pointed out, many I didn’t even catch until a second viewing. As the seasons progressed, changes began to impact the story. An altered character or event could no longer contribute to the narrative in future episodes and seasons. Finally, the story begin to run up against the end of the source material, meaning the screenwriters were on their own. As a result, the final seasons depart from both the word and the spirit of the novels in many ways. The last season* of Game of Thrones, when the screenwriters were entirely on their own and under pressure to wrap up the story, nearly fell apart altogether.

One kudo I’ll give to both of these series as they’ve aged is their lesser reliance on T&A. For the HBO series, weekly, gratuitous sex was almost a hallmark of the program and yet it has been all but omitted from the final season. The Expanse, if you’ve never seen it or don’t remember so far back, opened up with a zero-G sex scene. Come to think of it, maybe that wasn’t quite as gratuitous as I initially thought. I still miss Kristen Hager’s character despite only a few fleeting minutes of screen time in a single, opening episode. Maybe that was the point.

Other than that, though, the quality of the TV versions relative to the written material seems to go steadily downhill. The Game of Thrones final season has been thrashed around plenty, and I’m not sure if I can really add to the pile-on. If you take out the ponderous shots of each of the main characters emoting and the stock “epic battle” footage, I’m not sure if there is all that much left to make up a season*. It’s better than the ending from the internet joke, “Everybody dies. The end.” But not by much.

The Expanse hasn’t quite dug the hole that Game of Thrones found itself in and it could still go either way. Like with Game of Thrones, changes that seemed reasonable and clever in Season 1 didn’t look so good as the books developed. I’m guessing the writers had no idea Dmitri Havelock (Miller’s partner) was going to be Cibola Burn‘s major protagonist when they decided to have him die rather than just ship-off midway through the first season. My biggest gripes with Season 4 perhaps are similar decisions, ones that perhaps were necessary to compress the book into a TV series and make it suitable for the screen. For example, mid-Season 4, Amos Burton goes all weepy and suicidal when his eyesight starts to fail. For me, this is entirely contrary to the character of Amos, a man who isn’t afraid of death but will be the last one to go. I realize, though, that this is the equivalent of the books’ Burton feeling pangs of remorse, guilt, and sorrow and being unable to understand what is happening to him. It’s an exploration of character that can only work in a novel. Screenwriters needed to substitute something that could be seen rather than explained. I still don’t like their choice, but it is a solution.

Similarly, the choices being made to compress Season 4 may turn out looking reasonable or stupid, once I’ve read a few more novels. Some of the alterations bother me but many of them, I acknowledge, needed some kind of adaptation. Beyond that, though, I feel that (these days) I’m always in danger of being manipulated by writers with a PC agenda. One change is to transform reluctant terrorist Basia Merton** into a simpering milquetoast. Instead his wife, who in the book was the key character of Dr. Lucia Merton, assumes his role. Lucia also needs to fill the shoes of Naomi and the implications of Naomi being captured and then liberated from Havelock and the corporate security – all of which was removed in the TV story. So instead of a natural tension between husband and wife, rebel and physician (Basia kills Earthers and Lucia saves them), we merely have a pitifully weak husband who doesn’t appreciate his wife’s boldness. Part of the reason it bothers me is I suspect a reason for the change is, with the removal of Naomi’s heroics, the writers felt they had a gender imbalance. Lucia is transformed into a tough, blue-collar freedom fighter to show that women can be spunky and fierce. It doesn’t help, though, that she doesn’t show much of either. Except for reluctant role in blowing the landing pad, she mostly seems to whine about how she wants to die. I feel cheated.

The book also has some hints of the political coming to the fore in Nemesis Games that I hadn’t picked up on before. Burton’s encounter with a “prepper” ends so badly for the latter that I can’t help but take it as a commentary on the pointlessness of the survival movement. I’m not sure it is necessarily political, though. There is a thoughtful discussion to be had about the value of organization, official or otherwise, in the face of disaster. Even preppers, themselves, ridicule the idea that to prepare is to buy lots of “gear.” It reminds me of a story (with that point) about how possessing a single, 9mm bullet would be sufficient “preparation” given the skill and attitude to act. Amos’ character prefers to be well armed and armored but we read how his ability to survive is independent of all that.

Another political commentary of sorts pops up in that same book. As Fred Johnson (the ex-military head of the Outer Planets Alliance) and Jim Holden (pivotal hero) attempt to analyze the threat posed by Naomi’s baby-daddy (see how good writing weaves this all together?), Johnson explains that he thought him unlikely to have committed a rogue surprise attack on, well, pretty much everyone. Johnson goes on that Marco Inaros leads a “group of high-poverty Belters. The kind of people who live in leaky ships and post screeds about taxation being theft.” Although Naomi was, at least in her younger days, one of those “kind of people,” from the context it is clear that these are the villains of the story. More allegory?

Returning to the quote at the top of this page, this spoken to Holden by Fred Johnson commenting on Inaros as a leader. He compares the recent attack to Alexander’s charge in the Battle of Guagamela, a defining battle for Western Civilization and, in the future world of The Expanse, of Earth itself (at least to a military-trained mind). Holden is not familiar with the battle, and Johnson describes it to him. Part of Johnson’s insight is that while Alexander’s audacity, leadership, and bold attack did win him the battle and the war, it was also Darius’ decision to flee the field of battle rather than fight that lost it. In other words, even if you are facing a true Alexander, you should at least try not to be Darius.

*Season? Its six [expletive deleted] episodes!!! Remember when a season used to mean 22 shows, intended to fill one-half of a year, followed by a second “seasons” of reruns? I do, and I’m not pleased with the new normal.

**Basia is also connected to the events of earlier novels. The connecting tissue was deemed superfluous when paring down Season 2. It is an important part of what holds the narrative of the novels together. Important for the TV show? Maybe not.

In the ancient world, in order for a ruler to boost his legitimacy, it helped to be able to trace your lineage to the myth’s and legends that surrounded the religion of the times. The family of Phillip II of Macedon claimed to descend from Temenus, King of Argos, himself the great-great-grandson of Heracles. Heracles, of course, was the son of Zeus and, thus, Phillip could claim not only ancient royal blood but also divine ancestry. Such a pedigree helped breed loyalty.

Alexander’s promoters were not content with an Elizabeth Warren-like divine heritage and it is said he was fathered, not by Phillip, but by Zeus. Sources differ about whether Olympius, Alexander’s mother, promoted or objected to such rumors. Clearly someone, however, was pushing the story and it no doubt boosted Alexander’s ability to drag an army half way across the world.

Philip II in Field of Glory II

I suppose, upon reflection, it was a wise move to not tackle Alexander’s campaign in Field of Glory II‘s campaign mode. The game offers two related Macedonian campaigns, one for Philip and one hypothetical one which assumes Alexander lived longer to continue his conquests. In one case, Philips battles are considerably less known/documented when compared to those of Alexander. In the other case, they aren’t documented at all, because they never happened. These are both advantages when it comes to the structure of campaigns in Field of Glory II.

Philip begins his campaign in 358 BC, taking on the Illyrians.

The campaign starts with Philip battling the Illyrians and a fairly typical random-map setup. The player is assigned a core army and then is given points with which to fill out his forces, tailoring the force make-up to his preference. One the army is selected, placement of that army can either be automatic or arranged by the player. Once all units are placed, the enemy (at least those not obscured by the game’s fog-of-war system) is revealed.

After a victory, it may be necessary to bleed off some of your army to garrison your conquests.

A victory at the tactical level takes you back to the campaign screen. Losses on the field will result in your army being depleted going forward. You may also be required to remove some of your units from your field army to serve as garrison units. It represents are simple but effective “guns or butter” strategic management. Sending more units to garrison duty results in a higher depletion of forces in the near term, but increases the points available to either “heal” damaged units or, after that has been accomplished, purchase additional units in future battles.

On to to the next fight. The campaign can either be linear or branching.

The campaign system sets up structure where the core units of your army are carried forward through a series of battles. The follow-on battle will be against a historically-appropriate enemy but will still have random factors as well as whatever tailoring the player has done with his own army. In addition, some of the “stages” having branching decisions, allowing the player to make decisions about the type of battle he would prefer to fight next.

This sort of “campaign” is probably familiar to long-time wargamers (John Tiller‘s campaigns system springs immediately to mind) despite the fact that the dual level system popularized by the Total War series has now become a standard.

The strategic level view is shown as a hand-drawn paper map.

On that note, there is a newish challenger to Total War when it comes to representing the ancients world at this level. It also chooses to focus on the campaigns of Philip rather than those of Alexander. I use the word “Newish” as we’re comparing to the likes of Rome: Total War and Field of Glory. The game was originally released as Hegemony: Philip of Macedon in the spring of 2010 but was updated and re-titled to Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece in early 2011. There series has since expanded to other time periods (both earlier and later than Philip’s lifetime) with the latest expansion having been released in 2017.

The system gets points for innovation. We haverecognized that the tactical level of battles and the operation/strategic levels are at very different scales and deserve some kind of special treatment. In this case, the game sticks with the original Real-Time Strategy (RTS) template of all levels of the game proceeding on a single, continuous-time clock, but it is the user interfaces which treats the levels differently. Zoomed in, you see a 3D-rendered terrain over which units can move and fight. Zoom out your view to the bigger picture, and the depiction changes to the look of a hand-drawn map with figures representing units, leaders, and cities (see above screenshot). The table-top figures continue to slide around on the map, assuming they are in motion, and the game clock continues at the same rate from whatever level you chose to view the map.

Strategic-level considerations also have some innovative treatment. The classic RTS mechanic of build queues, while tried and true, fails to satisfy one looking for a historical wargame. An Age of Empires -style economic system typically requires you to manage your economy along side the tactical management of your army. The “guns versus butter” decisions are made both in terms of resources (do you spend on armies or technology?) as well as player attention (do I watch and click on my armies or my base?).

In Hegemony, map locations, be they cities, farms, or mines, produce the resources necessary to maintain your empire. However, creating connections (by road or by sea) between locations turns the management functions over to the computer. So the economic management becomes mostly creating supply lines and then defending them against enemies who would wish to disrupt them. The system streamlines micromanagement of the economy leaving, for the most part, considerations that would be in the purview of the military commanders.

Another novel feature is the way it handles lost units in battle. In your typical RTS, any units destroyed in battle must be replaced by building new ones back at your base. Assuming mid-game, the total unit count might be capped so that a loss on one side of the map will free up a build queue on the other side to create a replacement. If you are resource constrained, too many losses will cause your build queues to also grind to a halt. It forces you to manage your resources but doesn’t in any way resemble the way armies were raised, equipped, and fielded in the ancient world. In Hegemony, by contrast, units will disintegrate into a fleeing mob. When that mob makes it back to the unit’s home city, the city will begin its reconstructing based on the resources available. Adequately reformed, the unit can then again be moved forward into action. This method isn’t necessarily more “accurate” in any kind of simulation sense, but it does help reduce some of the sillier micromanagement as well as telling a better historical “story.”

While the game gets an A for effort, it does considerably less well in its execution.

The historical context is provided mostly by the tutorial and campaign “cut scenes” the guide you through your gameplay.

First of all, it is still an RTS, and second or third tier even by RTS standards. At the beginning of the Philip campaign he fights significant battles with but one infantry and one cavalry formation in his “army.” While the game provides a semblance of the advantages of a mixed-unit force, and occasionally does an interesting job of it, the resulting battles still bear little-to-no resemblance to their historical counterparts. Similarly, the game still has the same focus problems that any pure-RTS does. If you decide you need to work on the economic conditions of a city, you may find* that a battle has been fought and lost on the other side of the map while you were repairing your farms.

Another issue is that the UI is less than perfect. One issue that particularly bothers me is with the unit commands. It uses a “wheel” style graphical interface to select among possible commands for a unit. In many ways it is similar to the Field of Glory II / Pike and Shot system that I’ve been so happy with. The biggest problem, however, is that the in order to select from the choices, it is necessary to keep the right mouse button depressed. The result is a wrist-straining mouse maneuver where one attempts to figure out what options are available and select the desired one while hoping that the graphic widget doesn’t disappear because you over-moved your mouse cursor. Similar UI design misses run through this game.

Also part of the problem is I’m not that good at it yet. Those familiar with RTS play will probably recognize my struggle. When you’ve fallen behind, all you can do is react to enemy units coming at you from every direction. Your units die and new ones are built to feed into the meat grinder. You play on wondering whether you’ll get control of the situation or whether your run out of resources before you do, but win or lose it isn’t fun. Especially if you lose.

If I had a mastery of the lowest level, I perhaps would find the strategic level more interesting. As the kingdom expands, Philip is going to have both land and sea supply routes that need to be defended. Will that make play strategically more interesting or just keep piling on more stuff to work at until, whatever my play level, I’m eventually going to be overwhelmed again? As it stands, this game has a bunch of appealing features but I just can’t warm to it as a whole.

The “branching campaign” style of Field of Glory II can often seem dry, especially without that cool-looking map showing your conquests and frontiers. In the context of an actual historical campaign, however, it may be the best way to give the player battles to fight without introducing micromanagement for micromanagement’s sake.

*The game’s UI provides a system of alerts when enemy units are spotted or when they attack your units or facilities. While it is adequate to the task, it is easy (at least for me) to lose track of the incoming messages because I’m concentrating on my own task at hand.

Since I opened that can of worms, I figured I might as well compare my more serious efforts with one of the big reasons that I’m desperately seeking ancients PC games to begin with: Rome: Total War just can’t handle the period.

Alexander the Great assembled a vast army, numbering 966 souls, and marched upon Babylon.

The graphics and animations, of course, look as you would expect them. This is from the previous decade’s version of Total War. Despite the fact that it was actually released subsequent to Total War: Rome II, it doesn’t look substantially different from the 2004 version. I still think circa-2004 animations look pretty good but will depend on your expectations.

By the time this title came out, I had already given up on Rome: Total War in frustration. However, a few years after release I managed to pick Alexander up as part of a package deal, so I’ve had it sitting around in my library for ages with no intention to play.

Given that the battles of antiquity, at least those whose records have survived to the present, tend to have been massive affairs, the modeling (graphically and mechanically) down to the individual soldiers in Total War is always going to present a problem. One could, of course, assume that like the units in Field of Glory or Great Battles of Alexander, these are mere “stands” of soldiers representing much larger formations. While this could work in theory, the game engine really doesn’t play along. The individual soldiers show on-screen tend to act like individual soldiers, not like plastic models abstractly representing a formation.

Even if we allow that each soldier portrayed on screen represents, say, 50 men a piece, the unit count still seems too small. The number of discrete formations is probably a third or a quarter that of the Great Battles version, once you set aside the Macedonian phalanx units that make up the front line. The ratios are also way off. Outside of that big phalanx center, there aren’t enough support formations. For skirmishers, for example, the Greeks sport a single band of archers. Cavalry is limited to two units of Companions plus one other horse unit. Even if we were hoping to treat the little-on-screen men as “miniatures,” the scenario still seems underdeveloped.

The horrors of (Total) war.

And then, of course, it’s still Total War, isn’t it?

Maybe you can accept the scaled-down version of the scenario. Perhaps you’ve even gone into the scenario and edited the unit balance to have the proper historical mix. In the end, you’re still going to have Alexander leading a pair of phalanges tear-assing around the battlefield routing, one-by-one, what remains of the Persian army. Total War: Alexander was designed to please on-line, competitive RTS players, not history freaks.

And that’s why I don’t play it.

I loath to even open up the campaign game where I am forced to juggle city management on top of those unrealistic battles. On the other hand, Total War might (accidentally, more than anything) come close to approximating the strategic considerations of Alexander’s conquest. His entire campaign was only, roughly, a dozen years. He moved with the core forces of his original army mostly in one direction; having left Macedon, he never saw it again. While his army grew, it was largely using foreign troops recruited from the provinces of the nations he conquered. Whereas for, as an example Roman campaigns, the build mechanism of Total War is a gamey misrepresentation of how empires actually field armies, in the contest of Alexander’s conquest of Asia, it might be as good a model as any.

In the years since I stopped playing Great Battles of Alexander (and its two follow-ons, Hannibal and Caesar), I longed for something to take its place. As I started have compatibility issues between the game and newer PCs, it seemed like Great Battles would be a fairly easy game to re-implement. It played pretty easy, and didn’t seem all that complex.

We Beg You, Tell Us Who

A deeper look led me to believe there is more there than meets the eye. Or, at the very least, more than I would be able to replicate if I were to program it on my own. This applies both to the rules (a glance at the Great Battles of Alexander, the board game, and its rulebook gives some hint, even if you don’t know how much of that was included in the computer model) and to the AI, which may not be brilliant but it does seem competent. I know I spent some time looking at the easier rules for Ancients and its potential for a home-brewed computer game. Eventually, Tin Soldiers: Alexander the Great came out and I figured I had something satisfy my fix, at least momentarily.

One of the more esoteric solutions I played during that time was actually an idea I had myself. I realized that one of the more difficult parts to programing an intelligent opponent is the fact that the map is in two dimensions. This is difficult for the AI, because of the number and complexity of paths from Point A to Point B and, at the same time, makes it more difficult as a historical simulation. Macedonian phalanges didn’t whirl around to face new directions, willy-nilly, or race around an enemy to hit them in the rear. The action was pretty linear. So, I wondered, what if you could play the game simply as opposing lines rather than maneuvering on a hex grid?

In fact, while we’re at it, do we even need the board part of this boardgame?

One conversion of the Great Battles series I played with for quite a while was Hoplites. Instead of a board, each unit is draw as a card from an army deck and then deployed a linear battle line, either in the center or on the flanks. The opponent has an identically-sized line opposing you. Units engage their counterpart or, if unopposed, gain additional options. It made for a nice quick play when the ancients theme was desired, but fell short of replacing the experience of Great Battles. If nothing else, recreating historical battles was impossible without a variable battlefield.

The First of Its Name

It is an interesting coincidence that the year Field of Glory became available, development and support of Hoplites stopped. For those less skeptical than I, I suppose Field of Glory offered to be the new incarnation of ancients battles for the PC.

Same players, different field.

The Field of Glory package for the ancient Greeks, Immortal Fire, included the Battle of Gaugamela. At least one user made their own version of that battle, based on the board game’s setup. So as a comparison, I downloaded a version of that Great Battles conversion to FoG, a modification of that user-made version by prolific scenario developer Kilroy.

So how does it compare?

The battle plays faster in this format. Field of Glory uses a system for extra movement per turn when units are outside of engagement distances, to minimize the counter-pushing involved as the lines close in on each other. On top of that, there is a certain inefficiency to Great Battle‘s leader activation. In FoG, the simple one-side-then-the-other structure is going to make each turn a little shorter, even given the same number of units to move.

There are negatives as well. As I’ve noticed before, the Field of Glory units lack character. Yes, there is no double-wide phalanx formation, but that’s not all I’m talking about. The units just don’t seem to have the individuality that they did in Great Battles version. In Great Battles, I was genuinely afraid when that formation of chariots began heading toward me. In Field of Glory, I noticed my first chariot after it was already running away. I’m not saying there is no difference between units. In fact, the handling of phalanx melee is probably a little better – in Field of Glory, it isn’t until the phalanx have closed and engage that they start doing their real damage. It’s just that Field of Glory doesn’t have the atmosphere.

The Macedonians were able to dominate the field from one end to the other basically by charging forward and hitting the Persian lines.

I don’t know whether to attribute it to a lesser AI or the fact that bringing the same units mix over to Field of Glory threw off the game balance, but whereas in Great Battles the game always seemed to be close, this one felt like a pushover. The scenario was explicitly designed to open the door for the historical breaking of the Persian center by Alexander himself, but I found the tactic neither necessary nor convenient. It may be that this scenario design goal was part of the problem; player-versus-player game with scenario might have the understood limitation that the Macedonians are to emulate Alexander’s historical strategy (counterintuitively) adding to the challenge for the Greek side.

More importantly, despite some obvious improvements in user interface and the like, the game does not feel like an upgrade to Great Battles of Alexander. Much like Hoplites before it, Field of Glory seems to get a few things right, but falls short in many other areas.

Worthy Successor

But now, finally, we have Field of Glory II. Perhaps we finally have a computer program that can get this period right? The mere hope that it could be was enough to break out the game I’d bought a while back, but had yet to play. What better battle to try it out upon than the Battle of Gaugamela and get its take on history.

Alexander’s opening moves. First impression is that the battlefield is huge. Might be that fog effect for distant units.

I think it goes without saying that this is the best looking of my current options. Of course, it isn’t Rome: Total War: Alexander, nor should it be. One almost assumes that an emphasis on 3D animations is going to come at expense of historical fidelity.

My initial impression, as I mentioned in the above caption, was that the virtual board was huge. After some scrolling around, I realized that the unit count matches pretty closely both of the other versions of the battle. Since this version wasn’t build specifically from the Great Battles of Alexander board game order of battle, there are some differences in the detail, but not enough so that we wouldn’t recognize the setup.

Or, at least not from the Macedonian side. From Darius’ perspective, the setup has changed. In Great Battles of Alexander (the PC game, this time), one challenge the Persians have is that, while their numbers are superior, their generalship is not. It will take many turns for them to advance the main body of troops at their center into the fray. In fact, the player (or the AI in my case) must prioritize whether to advance or whether to attack with what comes up, as it comes up. In my games, the battle was decided while may of the Persian units were still maneuvering to engage. In Field of Glory II, on the other hand, the Persian units that would never engage are left off the map entirely. The forces that are to play an active role in the battle are themselves placed in close proximity to the Macedonian lines.

Heavy infantry clashes really field like heavy infantry.

My general complain with Field of Glory was that the unit types lacked character. This complaint does not persist with Field of Glory II. While there are no double-sized phalanx units to be found in this game, the differentiation between units types, as driven by the rules, give each their own character. Skirmishers not only retreat from fighting, but can pass through the ranks of heavy infantry. Two opposing units of heavy infantry facing each other, on the other hand, engage in an escalating slugfest, possible with the weaker getting pushed back before it starts to break.

Also, as was the case with Pike and Shot, command and control issues, while not explicitly modeled through leader activation -type rules, do translate through in a believable way. At the outset, all of your units (absent some special scenario configurations) are available for you to control with the full ranges of options. As the battle proceeds, you begin to hit constraints. Engaged units and units undertaking pursuit of enemy forces cannot be controlled. Units that have suffered losses of order and morale have considerably fewer options, as do units that are under threat by an enemy. By the end of the game, it may be that less than a handful of your units are still under player control.

The system has notable improvements since Pike and Shot was released. There’s the skirmisher thing I mentioned above. The system now, also, allows you some additional control when units are already engaged in combat. In Pike and Shot, any units that were already engaged would be cycled through automatically at the end of each player’s turn. Now, a player can force the resolution of a combat during his own turn and, perhaps, change his plans depending on the results. Also, the game now includes leaders in the game, something notably absent from Pike and Shot. In perhaps one of the better implementations so far, leaders are attached to a specific unit but they can be reassigned by the player. This can be done during the scenario deployment phase or even during battle (under a more limiting set of circumstances).

Alexander leads his companions in a charge to the rear of the Persian center. Have I finally found my hole?

The technical changes aside, though, does Field of Glory II handle historical scenarios well? I’d say, as good as some and better than most.

The feeling of the battle was reasonable. As the Macedonians, I had an advantage in part of the field while simultaneously worrying about the opposite wing. Unique to all my attempts so far, it was my Companion cavalry that was first to break their wing of the Persians, a first in all the versions of this battle I’ve played to date. In the above screenshot, you can see Alexander leading his Companions as they crush some Iranian cavalry, leaving the way open forward and towards the center (the top of the screenshot) and Darius.

Somebody is missing.

This resulted in a win for me. Given the configurability of the game, this can’t be taken as any indication of either my skill as a player, the quality of the AI, or the balance of the scenario (from a historical perspective). I’m playing on one of the easier settings where I’m able to keep a pretty fair hold on my AI opponent. But this victory screen also illustrates clearly the way this scenario was configured, as I described earlier on in the article.

The Macedonian order of battle is at the very high end of estimates I’ve read for Alexander’s forces at this battle. The Persian force is not only much smaller than any historical estimate, but even smaller than Alexander’s. As I said, I believe the intention was to simulate Alexander’s ability to break the Persian will to fight before the center of their army was even engaged.

So based on this battle, I have to give Field of Glory II its place as a worth successor to Great Battles of Alexander. There are still a few features* of the old program that FoGII hasn’t created a substitute for, but in general this appears to be a good way to relive these ancient battles with modern graphics and user-interface. Once you also consider that Field of Glory II has tools to create both new scenarios and random match-ups, it is clearly filling in the spaces where Great Battles was lacking.

*One, in particular, I’ll mention is the “group move” function. Field of Glory II also has a group move, but it is more of a UI improvement (over, say, Field of Glory) than a game function. In Great Battles, the group move would allow a commander to move more of his army if it stayed in formation than he could if he commanded each unit individually. That is, doctrine would allow command of larger armies by sacrificing flexibility. In Field of Glory II, the group move does give you any advantage; it allows you the same moves available unit-by-unit, but with less clicking.

Oliver Stone release Alexander in 2004. It had been more than 10 years since his string of box office hits and around the same length of time (depending on what you count as “his film” and how you feel about Nixon) since he collected awards from his filmmaking. Nevertheless, at that time, I was pretty impressed with Stone’s oeuvre and felt sure that he could make this a good, if not great, movie.

Then I watched it.

The first impressions this one left on critics, professional and amateur, were a bit rough. Alexander’s Northern-European skin and shiny-blonde hair upset many, although one could argue that it is a reasonable portrayal based upon how he’s been described and represented through the ages. Then there is Colin Ferrell’s accent. I recall trying to defend the Irish brogue. Given that Greeks are nearly always portrayed speaking British-accented English, couldn’t it be a deliberate point to have Macedonia’s suns speaking with a slightly-foreign accent? Of course, I’ve also read it all came about based upon Farrell’s inability to completely drop his native accent and deciding it would just be easier to have his generals sound like him.

Then there is the bisexuality. Much was made in the run-up to the release of this picture of Stone’s willingness to openly depict Alexander’s relations with his General, Hephaestion. Many touted this as enlightened and a challenge to the backwards morals of the film-going public. A group of Greek lawyers, on the other hand, threatened to sue for deliberately misrepresenting history. After the film was released, it again came under fire, this time from gay-activist groups, who thought Stone had failed to live up to his promise. Although there is much hinting and Jared Leto does wear a lot of eye-liner in the movie, no actual man-to-man-sex-stuff was shown on film (in the theatrical release, that is). In contrast, Alexander was shown in a steamy sex scene with his wife, Roxana (Rosario Dawson). Stone, meanwhile, blamed prudish morality for torpedoing his film.

But that wasn’t what did the film in for me. It was long, it was a little weird, and it was difficult to follow. I wanted to like it (and had no opinion on the gay thing) but I just couldn’t.

As the years went by, Stone continued to return to Alexander to try to salvage it. Preparing a “Director’s Cut” for the DVD release, he cut 25 minutes from the theatrical version and then added 17 additional minutes from the cutting-room floor. Two years later, he created a “Final Cut” where he added back the 25 minutes taken from the “Director’s Cut” and then an additional 40 minutes of previous-edited-out footage, creating a mind-boggling 214 minute version (don’t try to do the math, there were some other things cut out as well). I think I read about this stuff going on at the time but, for me, Alexander was bad enough when it pushed 3 hours, I really couldn’t see dragging it out to almost 4.

Can’t help myself

I actually narrowly-missed watching this one earlier in the year when it was pulled before. As it happened, I had to get my fix watching a German-language, History-channel style docu-drama. And while, in that earlier piece, I called the removed Alexander version a “Director’s Cut,” it was really Alexander (The Ultimate Cut). Oddly enough, this “Ultimate” version made its way back onto Netflix streaming later in the year only to be removed again as the calendar flipped to 2019. For all the reasons I mentioned back then, I decided I better hunker down at make my way through this one, the 3-and-half hour version that Stone put together in 2014, ten years after the original. He swears this will be it.

Despite my meager expectations, this version really is better. This won’t make the lists of great American cinema masterpieces but this version of the movie really was worth watching. There are moments where Stone’s genius shines through. Then there are others where it does not, such as the decision to dub in lion noises when for Alexander’s cheering army. Or that red filter. Ugh.

One decision Stone made for his extended versions was to reorder the film. Rather than being simply chronological (not including the opening, 40-years-later, narration, which begins all versions), the movie is now ordered more thematically. The narrative begins with Alexander’s triumph at Guagamela, arguably the high-water-mark of his career for him personally. We see him about to take on the impossible, facing Darius III’s numerical superiority on the ground of Darius’ chosing. He delivers a speech which rivals Braveheart‘s cinematically and probably is more effective than the former in establishing Alexander’s character. Stone shows us, in a few opening minutes of film, some of what made Alexander “the Great.” Charisma, military genius, and audacity are all combined in several-minutes and a few dozen lines.

In the film, we are being told about Alexander by Ptolemy who attempts to explain to us what made him one of the greatest of men. Within this story-telling format, a new theme becomes obvious*. Stone was criticized for showing a historically-inaccurate version of Alexander. But what is the historical truth? We hear Stone’s Ptolemy’s truth, but that’s just one version, and not necessarily even Ptolemy’s version. The end-titles remind us that Ptolemy’s memoirs were destroyed in the fire that burned the Library of Alexandria, so we can’t really know what was written there. Furthermore, this isn’t necessarily even Stone’s Ptolemy’s version. At one point, Ptolemy orders his scribe to just throw away what he’d said about Alexander and then dictates a different version.

So was Alexander gay? Stone’s Ptolemy says so. Plutarch does not. Whom do we believe?

Those Crazy Nights I Do Remember in my Youth

Watching the Battle of Gaugamela inspired me to get back out my copy of Great Battles of Alexander. Technically, it’s not “my copy” that I played from the CD back in the day. I have repurchased this series from GOG recently.

Alexander is trying to keep the left flank out of reach while the phalanges move forward.

Like Alexander (The Ultimate Cut), Great Battles of Alexander is even better than I remember. Also, like the film, part of the reason for this is that the game has been changed. Last time I played it, I had the original store-bought CD and was playing on an operating system years beyond that which it was designed for. Some of the edges are rough. I’m now playing the GOG version, which which works very well on the modern machine.

The graphics are obviously from another era. Great Battles of Alexander was released in 1997, which means Windows 95. Even still, these graphics have a certain beauty to their simplicity. As suggested in a review, the art is stylized to resemble the mosaics of antiquity. An occasional confusion about unit facing aside, they are not only attractive but functional.

Action shot. The dead pile up while the cavalry clash to the Macedonian left.

There are two particular graphical details I really like. First, as shown in the above screenshot, the riderless horses that run from a battle when a mounted unit takes casualties. There is actually an even better animation, which I didn’t manage to capture, where a fleeing chariot drags a dead body behind it. It all combines to allow the rather simple graphics to depict an ongoing battle in a visually-engaging way. A close eye can make out the ebb and flow of the battle and maybe guess, a few seconds ahead of the results dialog, the outcome of a close battle. The second detail is how units that are ordered to advance in a straight line along a hex spine actually do advance in a straight line, rather than wiggling up the staggered hexes.

The modelling of the battles is also simple, yet effective. The game is a computer version of the 1991 GMT board game of the same name (released in 1995 as a Deluxe Version and since then going through various reprints) from creators Mark Herman and Richard Berg**. After Alexander, the series branched out into other Ancient Warfare periods to encompass 15 different games (plus expansions) in the series. Even by the time the computer version was released, five games into the series, the game already had the feel of a boardgaming classic***.

In my mind, the system had two special features. The first is that turns are executed through the activation of leaders. The order is random (although driven by leader quality) so in a given turn, you don’t know which player, or which units of which player, will get to move first. The second innovation was to make phalanx units occupy two hexes. This added a certain physicality to represent the size and bulk of the Macedonian phalanx. I can’t say whether it actual “simulates” the battlefield qualities of the unit better, but it has a visceral impact while playing.

The conversion to a computer game exemplifies a concept I’ve discussed before, where conversion to digital format simplifies what once seemed like a complex game. The board version of Great Battles of Alexander is a meaty game. It’s a big board with lots of units and a rather extensive set or rules to cover a plethora of historical details, although I should point out that newer versions of the game have been released with a simplified ruleset. Upon converting to the computer, the details were generally kept in place but, being automated and managed by the computer, they get abstracted away from the player.

As one example, while a diligent player can still track the combat effectiveness of each unit and count cohesion hits, it is also possible just to get a “feel” for the strength of each unit by looking at its graphic. The units’ graphics tend to be representative of their combat strength and those graphics deteriorate as the cohesion of the unit deteriorates. The actual numerical values can be ignored in favor of just interpreting the visuals.

This, and other simplifications for the player, means that it is possible to whip through the computer version in short order. Short especially when compared to the major investment of setting up and playing the same scenario on the board. The computer manual, in fact, warns that the Gaugamela scenario might take more than one gaming session, as it is bigger than the others.

This also implies, if you plan to play Great Battles of Alexander fast and (let’s say) superficially, you need to learn all the subtle differences between units types and how they interact. Pushing cardboard, you’d need to understand all the details just so you could play. On the computer, though, you just let the game engine guide you. For example, I’ve learned through playing that the elephants in Darius’ army are pretty resistant to frontal assaults but can be quickly dispersed through missile attacks. I could have also figured that out by studying the mechanics of the game, but I didn’t bother.

My point in all this, is that a computerized version of this game can either make the game much more casual or be treated as a digital way to play the board game. There are advantages as disadvantages to each. The downside of learning, more or less, through experience is that your concept of the game won’t be comprehensive. There are certain to be rules that you aren’t considering or, even, are misunderstanding. That means that your experience of the game might be lacking. On the other hand, the player that does master all the game’s rules will probably find that the programmed opponent doesn’t present much of a challenge.

Now, I personally didn’t get this game to be played as a board game simulator. My interest is in the battles and being able to very quickly get myself into them. The game serves this purpose adequately. However, this does remind me of the one downside to playing the Battle of Guagamela in this game. It is something that has always bothered me, even when I played Great Battles of Alexander way back when.

Nope. No gap in the Persian left flank.

The key to Alexander’s victory in this battle was the moment when he perceived, and was able to exploit, a gap in the Persian lines. Despite being significantly outnumbered by the mounted enemy on the Macedonian right flank, Alexander disengaged his elite Companion cavalry and lead a charge against the Persian center where Darius’ was directing the battle surrounded by his royal guard. Darius fled the field and the morale of his army went with him. In all my play-throughs of the Gaugamela battle, the Persians have never given me that opening.

Even without that tactic, the battle is winnable as Alexander. Gut feel is the sides are pretty well balanced although I haven’t really tried to test that theory. It’s not really about winning so much as to question how well one can “re-live” a famous battle when the key aspect of that battle won’t make it into play? But is there an alternative? Would any player controlling the Persians, especially one who knows something about the battle, actually leave themselves open to a decisive, killer move? Could you respect an AI that did the same?

My other frustration with Great Battles of Alexander was the limits built into it. I seem to recall that the CD version I had contained a scenario editor. As far as I can tell, that is not part of the GOG package. In theory, the editor opened the game to a wide range of ancients tactical combat, historical and hypothetical. In practice, I never played anything outside of the campaigns and don’t recall ever coming across too much in the way of user-made libraries. We certainly weren’t headed down, for example. the route that Field of Glory took, presenting both user-made historical options as well as quickly-generated competitive-play scenarios. After once or twice through the campaign, I felt like I’d got all I can out of this title.

Now, 15+ years later, this package is once again fresh to me and, with GOG having solved the compatibility issues****, it is worth another look. I think I’m going to find newer options out there that do what I want done here, and better. Stay tuned.

*Well, sort of obvious. I admit I read this elsewhere rather than having picked it up by simply watching the movie.

**It is only as I am typing this that I realized that Richard Berg and Richard Borg are, in fact, two different game designers. Richard Borg is the developer of the Command and Colors series, another ancients tactical gaming system, subsequent to Great Battles of History. I’d never thought about it too specifically, but part of me always considered these two games to be connected. I’ve also confused both games with the tactical game Ancients (1986) at times. It is probably obvious at this point, but I own none of these board games.

***Arguably the real “classic” which Great Battles of Alexander expanded upon was Avalon Hill’s Alexander the Great, which I also never played. Alexander the Great was designed by none other than Gary Gygax in his pre-Dungeons and Dragons days.

****There are some complaints in the GOG reviews for this game about compatibility. I am running this on Windows 7, so I may be avoiding some of the problems that users of newer operating systems are having, even with the GOG package.

I’ve come to rely upon the five-star rating system in Netflix. I know there is no guarantee I’ll like a five-star movie nor hate a 2-and-a-half star one, but it is a good guide to at least point me in the right direction. This is somewhat mitigated by Netflix’s decision to give the “for you” rating which differs from the actual rating. Frequently, when I notice a movie is rated much lower than I think it would be, I notice that Netflix has discounted the rating “for me.” Even more frequently they are right to discount a title that, while popular, just isn’t for me.

With Amazon, on the other hand, ratings can be problematic. This is not just a streaming-video problem – similar issues involve all the products on their site – but it seems more acute when it comes to their video offerings. In particular, it seems hard to find a movie, show… what have you… that isn’t rated somewhere between 3 and 4 stars, give or take.

When it comes to Amazon users, it seems there isn’t a product out there that doesn’t have someone who loved it (no matter how bad it would seem to be objectively) as well as someone who had an absolutely terrible experience (again, even if they were the only one). Add to that, there are the users who give one star because the particular shade of blue didn’t match the other appliances in their kitchen. Others might say “the product is fine, but I really didn’t like the packaging. Two stars.” Finally, there are those five-star reviews that say, “I haven’t assembled by product yet, by I was really impressed with the prompt delivery.”

I won’t even go near the accusations of cheating within the product rating system though the use of phony user-reviews connected to the seller. I’ll leave it to the wizards at Amazon to figure that one out. But even if the reviews are “honest,” they are tough to rely upon. But with so much stuff being sold through Amazon, one needs at least some ability to triage the offerings to narrow things down to a reasonable set of choices.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

Having missed the “Director’s Cut” of Oliver Stone’s Alexander before it was removed from Netflix, I wanted to look for something to get me into that ancient Macedonian mood. Field of Glory II has extended its reach back to the wars of Alexander the Great. Mare Nostrvm covers a similar period, but on the sea. Both titles are subject to sale prices in the Steam summer sales.

Amazon has a half-a-dozen or so possibilities that are available with Prime video. None of the available choices are particularly well known, so I decided to go with the highest rated. Alexander the Great is a two-part series that seems to fit the bill. Three-and-half stars or so with a number of very positive written reviews (and one terrible one, naturally).

What this show turned out to be was something else.

It is a made-for-TV German production following the standard History Channel formula. The video mixes head shots of various academic experts cut in with sweeping Aegean scenery and a dash of live action reenactment from key points in the life of Alexander. So far so standard.

The problems, however, kick in immediately. The voices have been re-dubbed. For the first “talking head” they didn’t completely remove the German, so you have this odd effect of hearing German softly in the background and English in the foreground. But I can live with that.

The re-dubbing of the narrator seems decent and professional, except where he occasionally slaughters some pronunciation*. The re-dubbing of the various academics is a real mixed-bag. Some of them sound OK and some of them sound just weird. I also have to wonder if the translations are really accurate, or are they skimping on the translations to try to match the words to the video. Part of the way its done makes me wonder if there is an effort to obscure the fact that this is a non-English production.

a 1-line review

Then there are the reenactments, which are probably on par with the lesser History Channel offerings. The dubbing, however, is not. If the academics voices seemed weird, some of those ancient Greeks are even more so. Reviewers on Amazon were impressed with the scenery and costumes. The main figures indeed have decent costumes, although given the haphazardness of the rest of the production I don’t know whether to accept them as correct for the period. Several of the background figures, on the other hand, stood out like sore thumbs. They appeared to be wearing t-shirts printed with a shimmery material so as to look like metal breastplates. I guess its better than nothing.

I got so far in Alexander’s life to where he and his mother fled into exile after Alexander insulted his father’s drunkenness. Flee this production, too, shall I.

*The one that killed me is he referred to Alexanders cavalry as “Calvary.” Oddly, that one got hammered into me in public school, I think an elementary grade. I had a teacher that got rather angry when some of us kids were saying “Calvary” when referring to horses. She told us we were wrong, and explained to us what Calvary means. You probably can’t do that in today’s public schools, can you?